Newbury Park, CA – MAXON, the leading developer of professional 3D
modeling, painting, animation and rendering solutions, announced
that its industry-leading 3D software solutions, CINEMA 4D and
BodyPaint 3D, helped to streamline the entire filmmaking workflow
for award-winning indie filmmaker M dot Strange in his new animated feature film,
I am
Nightmare. Under the Mysterious Doll Studios banner, Strange
single-handedly created the film – his third solo feature-length
CG animated fantasy film effort in six years – and the third that
has deployed MAXON software tools to address the complexities of 3D
filmmaking and improve operational efficiencies on nearly every
aspect of the content creation process, including storyboarding,
character animation, set building, lighting, rendering, and more.
The film follows his two previous independent animated films,
Heart Strings Marionette (2012) and We Are the
Strange (2007), which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film
Festival and was honored with the Golden Prize for most
groundbreaking film at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal the
same year.

“We applaud M dot Strange for his relentless pursuit of
artistic integrity and for pushing the boundaries of our software
to the limits in I am Nightmare to yield such compelling
and unique images in this highly anticipated film project,”
says Paul Babb, president/CEO MAXON US. “MAXON 3D solutions
continue to provide artists with the tools and efficiencies needed
to fuel limitless creativity and Strange’s latest animated
effort demonstrates what the tools in the hands of a visionary and
proficient artist are capable of.”

Using CINEMA 4D, Strange spent a little over one year making
I am Nightmare, a 127-minute film that features 1420 shots
to evoke dream-like characters and a mysteriously haunting
atmosphere. Inspired by the works of filmmaker David Lynch and
Japanese animator Osama Tezuka, countless books, movies and his
imagination, the film focuses on a mother who moves her five foster
children to a place called The Town That Never Changes when shortly
after arriving they discover a secret they weren't supposed to
uncover. Each night, the children are forced to patrol the woods to
keep the monsters that lurk there and devour everyone in sight at
bay while the adults do nothing to help them. [Note: Watch the
I am Nightmare trailer here.]

Strange, who refers to the San Jose, Calif.-based Mysterious
Doll Studios as being the “world’s smallest CG feature
animation studio” also coined the term
“Uberector” to describe the role of an artist who makes
3D animated feature films alone and does more than direct during
the filmmaking process. He underscored the critical role a 3D
software package plays in streamlining the creative process that
involves various elements from acting/voices, animation, editing
and camera work.

“CINEMA 4D is a CG movie studio-in-a-box that gives the
one-person animation studio the perfect combination of ease of use
and a powerful feature-rich toolset that delivers unmatched
performance for creating entire CG feature films alone,”
Strange says. “There are other, more complex packages
available but I am an artist, not a technician, so I use tools like
CINEMA 4D that allow me to accelerate the overall workflow and
realize my cinematic dreams intuitively within budget.”

A wide spectrum of the animation tools in CINEMA 4D was
leveraged by Strange throughout the filmmaking process.
MoGraph was used to build sets and was deemed especially
helpful for building structures that have repeating elements. The
film’s stylized doll-like characters were created using a
combination of keyframe and procedural animation techniques, while
BodyPaint 3D was used to paint all the models
and texture all the props and sets to create a rough, hand-painted
look instead of simply adding a pre-made texture to the assets.

Among the numerous and complex technical challenges Strange
faced in creating I am Nightmare was the ability to
animate and manage the assets of the more than 1400 shots in the
film. Strange used the Content Browser in CINEMA 4D as a
‘living storyboard’ to organize all the elements in his
‘digital backlot.’ “After animating a shot, I
would save it to a folder displayed in the Content Browser so that
I could refer to all the shots, easily re-use camera setups and
animations and have an idea of the visual flow of the film to make
editorial decisions,” explains Strange. He also relied on
CINEMA 4D’s Character Animation and Motion Clip system to
create common animations for all the characters in the film and
convert walk and run cycles into motion clip loops that were then
used to create a collection of pre-made animations that could later
be dragged and dropped into different characters and new scenes, as
needed. “Using CINEMA 4D’s motion system I could dip
into my library of saved walks and runs to really speed things up
to more easily re-time the motion clips to better fit the
shots.”

The powerful rendering functionality in CINEMA 4D was also cited
as a key benefit to the solo filmmaking process. “The speed
in CINEMA 4D’s standard renderer is unmatched when it comes to
producing animation on a limited budget as it performs really well
on off-the-shelf machines and via the network render allows you to
use multiple machines if you have them,” outlines Strange.
“The Multi-Pass option coupled with the tight integration in
After Effects also helped me get the look I wanted in
post.”

To achieve the stylized and foggy mood that obscured “the
creepy things lurking in the dark”, Strange relied on the
powerful lighting system in CINEMA 4D including a mix of the
Volumetric and Visible Lights functions. The
Vibrate Tags and Displacement Deformers in the software also
enabled the filmmaker to add weird random movements to the monster
characters ranging from undulating tentacles or pulsating skin that
could be dragged and dropped into scenes using the XPresso visual node-based expressions
feature.

For more information on Mysterious Doll Studios and I am
Nightmare visit http://iamnightmare.vhx.tv/. The independently
produced film is being distributed by Strange and is available for
purchase online here.

For additional information on the CINEMA 4D workflow on I am
Nightmare, please visit the CGS feature.

About MAXON
Headquartered in Friedrichsdorf, Germany, MAXON Computer is a
developer of professional 3D modeling, painting, animation and
rendering solutions. Its award-winning CINEMA 4D and BodyPaint 3D
software products have been used extensively to help create
everything from stunning visual effects in top feature films, TV
shows and commercials, cutting-edge game cinematics for AAA games,
as well as for medical illustration, architectural and industrial
design applications. MAXON has offices in Germany, USA, United
Kingdom, France, Japan and Singapore. MAXON products are available
directly from the web site and its worldwide distribution channel.
Specially priced learning editions of the company’s software
solutions are also made available to educational institutions. For
additional information on MAXON visit www.maxon.net.